Fieke Asscher

Sophie Langer-Asscher

(4 January 1926, The Netherlands - 2002, Israel)

Fieke Asscher was a Dutch illustrator and graphic artist of Jewish origins. She was born Sophie Asscher in Groningen as the daughter of Chief Rabbi Avraham Asscher and teacher Clara Asscher Pinkhof. The Asscher family - father had passed away when Fieke was four months old - moved to Amsterdam in 1941, where mother found employment as a teacher and where Fieke enrolled at art school.

From November 1941, Fieke was illustrating her mother's comic story 'De Rare Belevenissen van Professor Stap-door-den-Tijd', that was published in Het Joodsche Weekblad. Clara Asscher also filled the other children's pages of his magazine, that appeared under the guidance of the "Judenrat", an administrative body during the Second World War that the Germans required Jews to form in the German occupied territory.

This comic about a time traveling history teacher ran until January 1943. By then, Fieke went into hiding in Frisia. Her mother was sent to Westerbork in May 1943 and later to Bergen-Belsen, and the family wasn't reunited until 1946, in Jerusalem. By now married and known as Sophie Langer-Asscher, she became a teacher until her retirement in 1981. Fieke Asscher's childhood is chronicled in her mother's autobiography 'Danseres zonder benen' (1985), and her daughter Efrat Hadany made a theater play about her mother called 'Sofia's Drawings' in 2012.